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Tucker Carlson’s recent remarks defending his interview of Vladimir Putin while appearing to also defend the Russian President came into sharp focus Friday after top Putin critic and political prisoner Alexei Navalny died in an Arctic Circle prison, with world leaders and political experts pinning the blame directly on Putin.
“Leadership requires killing people,” declared Carlson, seen by some as a right-wing propagandist, in an interview with Egyptian journalist Emad el-Din Adeeb that was recorded on February 6 and aired a few days later, according to Newsweek.
“Every leader kills people. Some kill more than others. Leadership requires killing people. Sorry. That’s why I wouldn’t want to be a leader,” said Carlson, the former Fox News host who years ago did stints at CNN and MSNBC before co-founding a far-right wing website.
Carlson was defending his decision to travel to Moscow to interview the Russian president, who is facing an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court at The Hague for war crimes related to his illegal war in Ukraine.
“Navalny’s death comes as the American conservative movement has grown sympathetic toward Putin, an autocrat whose political enemies have a long history of dying under mysterious circumstances. Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson is at the forefront of the right’s adulation of the Russian president, and just days before Navalny’s death he defended the nation’s alleged political assassinations,” Rolling Stone adds.
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“During the Dubai summit, Egyptian journalist Emad el-Din Adeeb asked Carlson why he didn’t ask Putin about jailed Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny, alleged political assassinations or restrictions in Russia’s upcoming presidential election,” Newsweek reported.
“I didn’t talk about the things that every other American media outlet talks about,” Carlson replied.
On Friday, video of Carlson’s remarks, all the more relevant in the face of what some are calling the “murder” of Navalny, drew harsh criticism.
The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake drew a comparison between Carlson’s remarks and Donald Trump’s:
“2015
@JoeNBC: ‘He kills journalists that don’t agree with him.’
Trump: ‘Well, I think that our country does plenty of killing, too.’
2017
O’Reilly: ‘Putin is a killer.’
Trump: ‘There are a lot of killers. We have a lot of killers. Well, you think our country is so innocent?’”
Blake’s remarks appear above the video of Carlson on social media.
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“The same people who drone on about ‘freedom’ and ‘free speech’ and ‘cancel culture’ also just casually say stuff like ‘Leadership requires killing people’,” wrote British-American journalist and New York Times best-selling author Mehdi Hasan. “Modern American conservatism is in a very dark place.”
“Tucker Carlson sums up the right-wing mentality: ‘Leadership requires killing people,’” observed former Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times editor Mark Jacob.
“Just an utterly soulless, manipulative, disgusting piece of human filth. Putin treated him with contempt. But Tucker is too far in now so he has to continue to fanboy him,” said MeidasTouch editor-in-chief Ron Filipkowski.
Professor of international relations Nicholas Grossman wrote: “One way the US is better than Russia is on freedoms of speech and the press, as shown by US allowing Tucker Carlson to lie, denigrate America, and push Russian propaganda, rather than jailing and eventually killing him, as Russia did with Navalny because he criticized the govt.”
Watch the short clip below or at this link.
Q: In your interview with Putin, you didn’t talk about freedom of speech in Russia, you did not talk about Navalny, about assassinations
Tucker Carlson: Leadership requires killing peoplehttps://t.co/sVhsX52ynP pic.twitter.com/wUjoVTkpR9
— Media Matters (@mmfa) February 16, 2024
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